Today everyone seems to want freedom!
Freedom to draw any cartoon he/she likes; The freedom to stop work and destroy property as and when one wishes to hold a bandh; The freedom to set ablaze buses and tires and hoardings and flags and effigies when they want to protest!
However, Somehow we have forgotten a more intimate and personal freedom. The freedom to choose one's own life partner. To be able to say freely, 'This is the person I would love to spend the rest of my life with.' To have the freedom to convert this dream into reality. The freedom to be allowed. To be heard, believed and to be true.
Every freedom needs courage. And here, the courage to be able to stand alone. To be able to reason with the family. To be able to listen to their reasons and concerns.
It is perfectly acceptable to have a life partner you might not have fallen in love with on the very first day you met! It is a persons choice to be happy and content being married to a person who he/she knows to be compatible. Someone who can support you, Someone you know you can support. Someone you can trust. Someone who might be able to understand you, even if he/she doesn't always agree with the way you think.
Hence it must be understood that the freedom to choose the person you marry does not only apply nor does it imply that you always marry the person you love.
For you might fall head over heels for the most beautiful person on earth; one perfect in every way. But it be so likely that he/she; or their lifestyles would be so far apart! The essence of a marriage is to get a man and a woman to live together, to support each other and start a family. Procreation; The survival of the human race! What is the point of marrying someone you tremendously love, but are irritated to your wits' end by their habits and manners!
It is here that the counsel of parents and elders comes to play an important role. For with their maturity and experience they can foresee and judge many a things that the youth in their brave and bold hearts cannot!
Gone are the days when the elders would pick the match for their children, and the children would obediently agree! In todays society, the parents and elders should ideally listen to their children's wishes, their views and ideas and then understand and evaluate the compatibility of a match!
Hence, in todays world I feel that the role of a parent in match making has become a lot more tough and challenging that it was ever before! Where the parents fail to see their changing role, you often find broken marriages, divorced mothers and unfulfilled dreams of true love!
What can be worse than a life that has lost its spirit of life? In this context, Love is the mightiest of all forces on Earth. For it can transform the common man into the bravest hero; as also the strongest and the mightiest of all are brought down to their knees when the arrow of cupid strikes in the bottom of their hearts!
